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Brute force copying of HD DVD and Blu-ray successful

The next generation of optical disc formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD, have an …

The original encryption designed for DVD movies, called CSS, was so easy to break that the programming code required to do so could fit on a t-shirt. Once it became clear that arresting people for wearing t-shirts wasn't practical, the movie industry decided that the next generation of high-definition optical disc formats needed a much tougher encryption scheme, called AACS.

Still, any form of encryption is only as strong as its weakest link. This was made clear earlier this year when the Xbox 360's extremely strong encryption scheme was bypassed by a modification to the firmware in the DVD-ROM drive. Now, according to the German technology magazine c't, it seems as if the strong protection on both HD DVD and Blu-ray movies has been worked around by not attempting to crack it at all.

The solution was surprisingly low-tech: the user simply hit the PrintScreen key. The screen capture feature of the operating system allowed each frame to be digitally captured exactly as it was displayed on-screen. Since it would be impractical to sit around advancing movies frame by frame and hitting PrintScreen all day, a script was used to automate the process. Each frame resulted in a 2 MB image. The computers used were fast enough to capture 30 frames per second, enabling real-time capturing of the movies without dropped frames. For a 90-minute movie, this is 162,000 frames, or approximately 324 GB in total storage, so if you try this, make sure you have lots of free hard disk space! The sound tracks must be captured separately and then re-synched with the video, so this is by no means a trivial process.

The magazine said that it has verified the capability with Sony's first Blu-ray PC (the VGC-RC 204) as well as Toshiba's HD DVD-equipped notebook, the Qosmio G30. Both of these computers use a new HD version of the popular WinDVD playback software to display high-definition movies. The "security" issue has been confirmed by Toshiba, and the company plans to issue a software and graphics driver update that will presumably disable the PrintScreen functionality. According to Toshiba, this version of WinDVD does not violate the security stipulations in the AACS license agreement, therefore the software update should be optional for users. However, in theory new movies could switch license keys, requiring a software update to restore movie playback functionality.

Still, the old adage remains true: if a computer can display something, some sort of software can capture it. If it's not PrintScreen, it might very well be something else.